Friday, November 14, 2014

Celebrating and Creating

On November 2nd, we celebrated the Day of the Dead making bread and colada morada. Samuel and Mateo made the bread with a little bit of my help. What a joy to eat the same bread that their little hands helped make. 



Guaguas de Pan - tradition in Ecuador on the Día de los Difuntos


Enjoying the meal. 

Then we have been preparing for Martinmas by making the lanterns. We have not gone on the lantern walk yet but we have been singing the songs that go with the celebration.  


"I go outside with my lantern, my lantern goes with me"


"This little light of mine, I 'm gonna to let it shine" 

And together we have been creating these pieces of art!  Mateo's requests that he learned from "Mister Maker" 


Feathers made with pencil sharpenings 


Butterfly: I made the drawings and Mateo did the paintings. 


Oso



Thursday, November 6, 2014

September and October went by fast!


September and October came and went very fast. We were busy doing activities at home but also taking trips to the land and visiting other beautiful places in Ecuador such as  Baños,  Antisana Reserve and the Pasochoa Reserve.  Mateo is into animals these days, all kind of animals. We have visited the Guayllabamba Zoo and the Baños Zoo and printed all the pictures of the animals and placed them in an album. We also added the photos from the Florida Aquarium and the Lion Country Safari, photos that we took when we visited Florida early this year. He has an album of almost 200 photos to look at and show to everyone! He also knows all the names of the animals. 



This is the first family drawing that Mateo has made. We are all pretty happy and have belly buttons! 



Running up hill with cousins Samuel and Zahir in the Pasochoa Reserve


Only to roll downhill and have so much fun. 


In one of the Zoo's we visited


Looking at condors in the Antisana Reserve. We were very lucky to see 3 and very close!


Happy running around and pretending to be a bunny rabbit. It was pretty cold and later on we got caught in the rain and hail. 


Beautiful on our way back home from the Antisana Reserve


Preparing for Halloween making sock puppets


This was all we had for Halloween. The next day we went to the land and carved a green papaya since you can't find pumpkins to carve here. It was great to have the two jack'o lanterns shine in our dark cabin as we fell asleep.